Practicing the Bounce!

Boy, oh, boy, am I ever facing a steep learning curve with my new flash attachment (580EXii). I’m trying to learn how to bounce the flash effectively. I ended up with a chin shadow in this one but like it nevertheless.

Walking with Carter

My Thanksgiving was spent in New Hampshire with family. I like this shot of my great-nephew Carter walking with his dad and Kate. Processed using a Lightroom preset called Creative Catalyst 15 found at Preset Heaven and produced by Wonderland Presets.

Hardware

Practically nothing is more important to Kate than ringette*. For years she has played for teams that have not met with much success, but this year’s team is something special. I wish I could take you all to see a game because I cannot even begin to explain the speed, finesse, agility, and ferocity these girls demonstrate as they play the sport they love. It was to everyone’s delight that we watched them go without a loss in the round robin of their first tournament of the season this past weekend, then battle back from a 4-7 deficit to take the gold medal. These are the medals awaiting presentation to my daughter and her teammates.

*Ringette is a girls ice sport similar to hockey.

All About Kate

Kate is competing in a tournament this weekend which will keep us in arenas a good deal of the time. Before I head back to the arena for Day 2, I thought I’d post a couple of images of her taken last weekend. My weekend is all about Kate, and now my post is too…

Portrait Practice – Braces Be Gone!

I forgot to mention that the occasion for doing these shots of Kate was the removal of her braces after three long years of orthodontia. So, the first of these two shots shows her beautiful new teeth, with a bit of retouching to remove yellow.

Following retouching of eyes, skin, and teeth, I used a Lightroom preset called Dror Veld from Dror Eyal found HERE.

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This one uses a Lightroom preset called Snow by Vert found HERE.

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And then another more dramatic one, also using the Snow preset.

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Portrait Practice – Smooth, Baby

Here is my second take on Kate’s portrait, this time with some skin edits. First,  I cloned away a few blemishes. Then, I sampled some midtone skin and painted on a blank layer at a very low opacity to smooth the roughness in the skin. I didn’t want to go too far, she’s a kid after all. Also did a bit of low opacity dodging of the eye area per a suggestion by Jen, which I think helped tremendously. Finally, I added a small amount of contrast back in Lightroom.

Any other ideas about how to go about this type of editing? Or, thoughts on learning how to take this type of casual portrait in natural light? Your comments so far have been really helpful so don’t hold back!

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Portrait Practice – The Eyes Have It

Here is the first of my experiments in editing one of the shots from my practice shoot with Kate. Luckily, she has woken up a bit by now. This was taken around 9:00 on an overcast morning. The first view is a pretty basic edit in Lightroom 1.4 with the exposure boosted a bit to unplug some of the shadows in the eyes and some sharpening applied using the portrait sharpening preset.

Following is my go at Kate’s eyes to make them stand out a bit more. Using Photoshop Elements, I used layer masks on several different layers; one screen layer to whiten the whites of the eyes, a second screen layer to lighten the irises, and a multiply layer to darken the pupil and the rim around the irises. Finally, I used Unsharp Mask on the iris area.

Note: I am mystified by the overall lightening of the second shot compared to the first because I did not edit it beyond the eyes. Something to do with color spaces and flipping the second shot from LR to Photoshop Elements and back to LR, I suspect. Will have to look into that further!

Later, I will do some retouching of the skin and lips and maybe play a bit with style too. In the meantime, all comments and tips will be appreciated. How do the eyes look? Is the pose okay? Other thoughts?

EDIT: I decided to put one more in this post. The second image from above but cropped to show the eyes better. Also, I think it is clickable to view a larger version.

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Too Early

One of my photography goals is to learn to make nice portraits using available light. To that end, I’ve been practicing on 13-year-old Kate. Today’s post is straight-out-of-camera, but I thought it was a good one to show what I was working with for this shoot (I mean the light, not the delightful model!). In coming days, I’ll show some of the processed shots from the same shoot. I will be very grateful for any suggestions and advice that will help me improve in both the shooting and the processing.